


he doesn't look a thing like jesus

by orphan_account



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Drug Use, High School, M/M, Religious Conflict, Shotgunning, rated t but there's a very very brief nsfw mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 16:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10134758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: but he talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young(dennis doesn't believe in god, but mac believes in both of them, and maybe that's close enough)





	

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoy this you should check out my [tumblr](https://charmacden.tumblr.com) because i finally caved and made a sunny blog and i need ppl to yell at abt these demon men

"Hey." Mac's head turns in the direction of the voice behind him. "You got the stuff?"

Normally Mac would laugh at this, the low, pointed half-whisper that rich kids use when he deals to them, as if they're ordering a hit on someone and not buying an eighth of weed behind the school, but he decides not to push it with Dennis Reynolds.  He's heard about his temper, and besides, Mac knows that he has friends who are popular—friends who, he remembers, hate Mac after he ratted half of them out to the principal.

Mac knows it's his own fault that he'll never get to be one of those guys, but he sometimes catches himself daydreaming about it anyway. It's not that he doesn't like hanging with Charlie and Pete and Dooley, it's just that this is different. Huffing glue in Charlie's mom's basement is comfortable but it's not enticing the way Dennis—Dennis' popularity, that is—is.

"Yeah, man, here you go."

Dennis catches the plastic bag Mac tosses him, holding it up to his eyes to examine it for God knows what and nodding, satisfied.

"Alright, how much?"

Mac gives him a quick once-over, wondering how much he can rip him off.

Judging by Dennis' button-up shirt, ironed without a single crease, it shouldn't be hard.

"Uh, sixty?"

"Sixty?"

"Alright, fifty, but that's as low as I'm gonna go."

The look on Dennis' face has gone from confused to distrustful. "Is this some kind of scam? My last guy charged me two hundred, so I don't know what kind of angle you're playing at but—"

"No angle! No, no, uh, what I mean was that it's sixty for half of it. This is all I've got for the next week or so, so if you want it, you, uh." He looks nervously up at Dennis. "You're gonna have to split it with me."

Mac knows he should just tell Dennis that whoever he'd been buying from—Adriano, probably—was playing the fuck out of him. He knows better than anyone that feeding into someone's delusions only makes it that much harder for them to accept reality, he's reminded of this every day when he looks up at God (or looks up at the sky—he can never quite tell where God is; he's heard North, but he can never quite tell where North is either) and begs him for a letter from his father, because his mother has told Mac that he loves him, so why won't he write, and—

"Yeah, okay."

Mac starts. "What?"

"Yeah, I'll smoke this with you. Of course, I have other friends I could be smoking with instead, but"—he looks at Mac the same way he looked at the weed moments before, as if searching for something. Mac wants to smooth back his hair, wants to puff up his chest, wants to meet whatever standards Dennis is checking for, but he can't bring himself to do anything more than track the movements of Dennis' eyes up and down him—"you'll do for now."

Mac tries to twist down the smile he feels spreading across his face. "Great," he says, reaching into his backpack to pull out a pipe.

"What are you—not here, you imbecile," Dennis says. "Behind the school? A teacher could come around at any minute, do you think I'm trying to get expelled?"

Mac laughs. "It's like six PM, dude."

Dennis doesn't say anything, just looks at him, until Mac sighs.

"Alright, my place is just a couple miles away if you want to head back there."

"Your parents won't care?" Dennis asks.

Mac thinks _they never do_ , but he just shrugs, not meeting Dennis' eyes. "Nah, my mom is at work all night and dad's... not here right now, so..."

Dennis smiles, and Mac wonders if Dennis works hard to make it menacing or if it comes naturally to him.

"Sounds great."

* * *

 

The stereo in Dennis' car blares something Mac doesn't recognize, something dramatic and upbeat that his dad probably would've said was for pussies, but Mac doesn't really mind it. His heartbeat catches up to it quickly, and Mac is starting to wonder if this was a good idea. He knows Dennis' family is rich beyond what Mac and Charlie can even imagine, knows he has a goddamn _mansion_ that the popular kids throw parties in when Dennis' parents are out of town on business trips, which, now that Mac thinks about it, seems to be almost every weekend.

He also knows that being around Dennis for too long could be dangerous. Dennis likes to tell everyone at school that he's a god, and Mac knows what the Bible says about worshiping false idols, and he's afraid he's not sure how much time he could spend with Dennis without dropping to his knees, and he can't think about that, he—

"Mac?" He snaps out of his daze and looks up at the road where Dennis is gesturing.

"Left," he says, digging his nails into his skin for something to hold onto as Dennis jerks the steering wheel.

After what feels like forever, the car rolls to a stop in front of Mac's house.

"That one yours?"

"Yeah," Mac says, not meeting Dennis' eyes.

Thankfully, Dennis doesn't say anything, just steps carefully out of his car, which Mac is sure will have bird shit on it by the end of the night, because even nature knows that something that shiny doesn't belong in a neighborhood like this, and, yeah, this was definitely a bad idea.

Dennis' hand reaches for the doorknob, and Mac's immediately reaches up to swat it away.

"Wait," Mac says. "We, uh, we shouldn't smoke it in the house, my mom might get mad and stuff." Of course, there's no way she could smell it with the air that thick with cigarette smoke, but Dennis doesn't have to know that.

"Backyard?" Dennis asks.

Mac nods and leads him that way.

The dead grass isn't much better than the interior of his house, but it seems less personal, less like something he can't turn back from.

Dennis opens the bag of weed, and Mac can already feel his head clearing from the smell, familiar in a way he's still not sure if he likes or not.

He hands the pipe to Dennis, who holds it in his hand for a moment before biting his lip and looking back up at Mac.

"You want me to show you how to pack a bowl?" Mac asks.

This was clearly the wrong thing to say. Dennis' eyes get sharp in the way Mac's been lucky to have only witnessed from a distance before. " _Show_ me? Do you really think _you_ need to teach _me_? Are you trying to patronize me? Because—"

"No!" Mac says quickly. "No, not at all, I just thought that maybe you could, like, see what I'm doing and tell me if I'm doing it right. 'Cause, you know, I might mess it up."

Mac can tell that Dennis doesn't believe him, but he hands the pipe back to Mac anyway. "I suppose that... wouldn't be too much trouble," he says.

"Do you have a pill bottle on you?" Mac asks.

Dennis tenses up again. "Why would I have a pill bottle?"

"I don't know, but I left my grinder at home, so it's the best we can do right now."

"Right, yeah," Dennis says. He reaches into his backpack for a full minute, doing something with his hands before wordlessly handing Mac a bottle, sticky from the label Mac suspects has just been picked off. Mac loads the weed into it and pats his pocket in search for— _thank God_ —a nickel that he would've been humiliated to have to ask Dennis for.

Once he's shaken it for what he thinks is long enough, he unscrews the lid and carefully begins packing it into his piece. It's small and dark red and not caked with too much ash since he and Charlie usually just smoke out of cans or apples. He can feel Dennis' gaze on his hands, which seem to move on their own, repeating the pattern they've followed so many times and giving Mac's brain far, far too much time alone with his thoughts, which keep veering back to the eyes still watching him intently.

Finally he's done, and Dennis puts the pipe between his lips in a way that's fucking obscene, and his mouth looks soft enough that it could be a girl's, and that's the only reason why Mac can't draw his eyes away from it. He should hand Dennis the lighter, he should just hand it to him, but his hands are reaching up and torching the bowl and Dennis is the one sucking in a breath but Mac is getting a head-rush.

Dennis exhales, his face contorted in a way that makes it clear he's trying not to cough, and passes it back to Mac. He finishes the bowl in one hit, hoping the weed combined with his ADHD will be enough to distract him from whatever else is going on in his head, and then packs another one, and then lets Dennis do the one after that. His technique is sloppy—too tight at the bottom and too loose at the top—but by this point Mac's head is foggy enough that he probably couldn't do much better

The conversation flows easier than he thought it would. Sure, there are certain subjects he has to train himself to avoid, but Dennis doesn't seem to be from as different of a world as Mac had thought. He knows it's just the weed, but the two of them seem to exist on the same plane, like with every breath of smoke they inhale they're drawn closer to each other and farther away from everyone else.

Dennis still paints his life as perfect, but he looks at Mac sideways after every lie he tells, almost like he wants Mac to call him on it. Mac doesn't. He's probably reading too far into it.

They've gotten onto the topic of family, which isn't exactly Mac's favorite thing to think about. He very pointedly tries to steer the conversation away from his parents, not wanting to ruin his high, and he's surprised to see that Dennis is doing the same.

"Yeah, my sister's a bitch. She always wants to, like, talk about emotions and listen to Alanis Morisette or whatever."

Mac nods. "Totally, yeah, girls are super annoying." He decides not to point out that he had definitely heard Dennis humming You Oughtta Know earlier.

"Okay, so"—he takes a long hit and staggers a bit, pausing to compose his thoughts—"if you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?"

Dennis considers this for a moment. "France is nice," he says. "I also liked Hawaii, even though I was finding sand everywhere for months. And I think we're going to Greece this summer. What about you?"

Mac feels his cheeks flush, and he kicks himself for forgetting that the hypothetical situations he and Charlie always daydream about aren't hypothetical for everyone. "I don't know, I'm thinking I might move to Italy one day, join the Mafia or something."

Dennis laughs, but it doesn't sounds as demeaning as it would without smoke filling his mouth. "You can't just join the Mafia."

"Fuck you, dude," Mac says, with no real energy behind it. "Even if I don't join the Mafia I'll probably become a bodyguard or something else even more badass."

Dennis raises an eyebrow. "A bodyguard, huh? You know, I could use a bodyguard."

Mac pushes whatever his heart is doing to the back of his brain. "Yeah?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, look at me. People kill out of jealousy all the time, it's not safe for me. Besides, it could be nice to have you around."

Mac doesn't know how to respond to that, and instead he directs his attention back toward the pipe in his hand, which, he realizes, is running low.

"Shit, this is almost out," he says.

"You can take it," Dennis says.

"No, you should have it. You paid for it."

Dennis meets Mac's eyes, and there's that sharp look again. "I could shotgun it to you."

The world fades to black for a second and then comes back, like when someone's waking up after fainting on TV. Mac knows he must have heard wrong, knows the hammering in this chest must have been loud enough to fuck with his ears. "You—"

"I mean, it's the only fair way to share it, right?"

"I—okay," Mac hears himself say, like the words told his brain what to do instead of the other way around.

Dennis takes the pipe from Mac, who's still focusing all of his energy on not collapsing, and lights it, not breaking eye contact.

He inhales for what feels like forever, and then he leans in and then there's smoke in Mac's mouth and lips just barely brushing against his and then it's over and his head is spinning and he thinks dimly that weed has never made his head spin like this before.

"Why don't you believe in God?" Mac doesn't exactly mean to ask it, but he's been wanting to all night.

Dennis frowns. "What?"

"Just like—like you always say that you're a god and shit, and I figure someone who actually believes in God wouldn't joke about stuff like that, since he could, like, strike them down, so"—he takes a deep breath, still inexorably aware of how close Dennis is standing to him—"so I'm guessing you don't believe in God, so... why?"

"I don't know," Dennis says. "God's just always seemed like kind of an asshole."

It's not enough to cut through the haze surrounding them, but it's enough to set off alarms in Mac's brain. "Dude," he says. "You can't call God an asshole, he'll totally smite you or something."

"That," Dennis says, "sounds exactly like something an asshole would do."

And, really, Mac can't argue with that. He can't even pretend he hasn't had the same thought, because of course he has. He's thought it while writing letter after letter with no response, he's thought it while watching guys like Dennis get a brand new wardrobe every fall while he and Charlie are in the same jeans—capris at this point—they've had since eighth grade, he's thought it in the middle of the night with his fingers curled inside himself begging God to let him picture a girl's face.

He's never even dreamt of saying it out loud, though, and maybe the fact that Dennis is able to means that he really is God.

"Besides, I'd rather know for certain that I'm happy now than to suffer on the off-chance that I might get to be in the future."

"Even if it means going to hell?" Mac asks.

"Sure," Dennis says, and that's all it takes, because then Mac is stepping forward and clutching Dennis' shirt like a rosary and he thinks that there's no way hell could be worse than the thirty seconds his lips were away from Dennis', thinks that if it burns like every inch of him where their skin is touching maybe that isn't so bad.

He doesn't really know what he's doing (he's only kissed two girls before and found excuses to stop as soon as he could both times) but maybe the Lord is guiding him, because he's sure that the inside of Dennis Reynolds' mouth is sacred ground, and he spells out prayers with his tongue in a language he's making up as he goes along, and how could he go to hell for this? He's eating the body and drinking the blood of the Lord, but he can't imagine that this is an unworthy manner.

Mac wonders if God himself is worthy of Dennis. He doesn't think so, doesn't think something like this could belong to anyone but him, and when he cries out Dennis' name while Dennis' teeth graze his neck, he only hope that he isn't taking it in vain.

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if this was kinda all over the place !! it's the first fic i've written in 3 years and the first iasip fic i've written Ever so it was more of a warm up!! but i want to get back into writing more, so feel free to send me macdennis prompts!!


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